This is where I share whatever's on my mind about current events, cats, politics, the weather, cats, and other small talk.

Monday, May 27, 2013

Man Tries to Open Door on In-flight Airliner

Federal agents arrested a 23-year-old man, Alexander Michael Herrera, on Monday for allegedly attempting to open the emergency exit while his flight from Anchorage, Alaska to Portland, Oregon was still in the air.

“The lights were out and I awoke to a loud hissing and then lots of screaming,” one passenger, Ryan Oelrich, said to the station. “I thought maybe the plane was going down.”

Oelrich said it took 5 or 6 people to subdue Herrera for 15 minutes before the plane touched down.

Israel's state airline, El Al, has a fascinatingly simply way of preventing this sort of thing. We call it "profiling," they call it "Talking to each individual before they get on the plane" to rather easily detect these people.

Everyone. That's the key. They talk to EVERYONE, to determine if they meet a "profile" that warrants a longer interview.

We are lazy, and try to profile based solely on appearance, and that from a distance, often as one appears over CCTV to a reviewer that may not even be in the airport.